


#prayforOrlando

by LaBelleIzzy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon LGBTQ Character, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, Grief/Mourning, Gun Violence, LGBTQ Themes, News Media, Podfic Welcome, Real Life, Social Media, transformative arts welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-07-14 16:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7181114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaBelleIzzy/pseuds/LaBelleIzzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tears happen because we have an overflow of emotions in the body. We cry from joy, rage, grief, for so many reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grief and rage, denial and despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric wakes to news of the shooting deaths of 50+ people on June 12, 2016, at a lgbtq club in Orlando.

Eric Bittle can’t stop crying. He’s home for the summer in Madison and wakes up to a hot sunny day in June with his Twitter notifications blowing up and the Haus chat going crazy, some of the boys are texting him to see if he’s okay.

He’s not okay. Nobody like him is ever going to be okay the morning they find out that dozens, DOZENS of people (just like him) were shot to death or wounded in a club where they just went to dance, have fun, flirt (just like anyone else in a dance club) and now Orlando, Florida has exhausted its blood banks and is calling out via social media and the internet to try and get more people in to donate blood…

Eric … the feelings in his chest are swirling and don’t stay put. The tears are sliding slowly down his face, he has to clear his vision every so often when they well up. There’s denial, rage, grief, shame, hopelessness and despair (especially when he thinks of the politicians that treat glbtq folk as DIFFERENT and less-than). There’s embarrassment and there’s a little hope as he watches his feeds (and his friends) reblogging hopeful things: direct appeals to help, pointed toward folks in the Orlando area. Humiliation when the posts about the blood bank lifting the blood ban for gay and bisexual folk are proven to be false. Anger when he thinks about how unfair it is to leave off an entire POPULATION of people from the blood-donor rolls, people who, in this circumstance, have the BEST and STRONGEST motivation to help out.

because it’s THEIR tribe who’ve been murdered. 

The frustration holds him still, just for awhile, until the anger and grief rises up and he rises up with it, off his bed, into his clothes, down the stairs, phone in his pocket still buzzing.

Mama is downstairs making breakfast. Eric knows his eyes are red and he doesn’t care. It’s time to help his mama understand. She needs to know, to understand that it could have been HIM. That he could be that college kid in a gay club, that the hater with a gun had NO RIGHT to their lives, that all of those people had their right to live their life stolen from them. She knows and understands that none of us is all that different from each other. That we all just want to live, and love and be happy.

Mama will understand that it wasn’t right, the club shooting. And for Eric to come out to her now, it’s still scary… but the rage and helpless frustration of people hating him without even knowing anything ABOUT him, he has to stand up and DO something about it. 

Even if the only thing he can think of to do right now is to tell the truth that scares him, he has to stand up to the haters and the killers somehow. He can’t live with himself otherwise.

He needs to hug his mama and help her understand so she will know why she needs to hug him back hard, like he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks, Ngozi, for letting us write stories about your children, I love them with all my heart.
> 
> read the comic starting here: http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/57705111693


	2. Love is the important thing...

Jack's phone is ringing, early Sunday morning. He rubs at his face with one hand and grabs the phone from the charging stand with the other.  
It's Bitty.  
It's very early in the morning; Jack's belly clenches with dread, picks up the call.  
Bitty's crying.

"Oh Jack... " and this is real crying, with sobs and sniffles and those horrible gasping breaths when you can't breathe right through the tears and the snot and the knot in your throat.

"Bitty, Bitty, _mon cher,_ what's wrong, sweetheart? What's wrong?" _What can I do, what can I do to fix this, to help him?_

Jack can hear the kind of muffling to Bitty's breathing that makes him think Bitty's scrubbing at his wet face with his hand.  
"Oh honey, oh my GOD, they're dead..." and a new batch of sobbing noises comes down the phone line.

Jack's mind flashes to some kind of horrible accident with Coach and Susanne.

"Your parents? _Crisse_ , Bitty, NO!?"  
"Oh gosh, no, sweetheart, not my parents, my parents are okay... We're all okay..." Bitty's obviously trying to calm himself down enough to talk, even through his sniffles.  
" _Mon coeur, ma petit, je suis là, je suis là avec toi..._ " Jack murmurs quiet comforting and shhh-shhh noises, as best he can, reassuring Bitty even while he's coming down from shocking himself with the possibility something might have happened in Bitty's home.

"If I were there, you know I'd be holding you tight and letting you cry on me, Bittle. I'd rub your back and let you do what you needed."  
"I do know, Jack, thank you." Bitty's voice is starting to calm, his breathing starting to even out.  
Jack takes another minute before asking, "What is it then, Bits? what's got you crying your heart out this early?"

Bitty takes in another shaky breath, audible down the phone line. "Sweetheart, you know that I grab my phone first thing in the morning to check Twitter?"  
Jack snorts. "Of course. You're an addict, you know." He hopes that chirping Bitty gently might help normalize and ground him.  
"Oh you..." *sniffle* "Mind you I ain't sayin' you're wrong, you know." Bitty's Georgia accent always gets stronger when he's upset. Jack doesn't know when he first noticed that, but in part because of that, the urge to protect his boyfriend is really strong right now.  
A bit more sniffling.

"First thing I saw when I opened Twitter was that there'd been a shooting. In Orlando, Florida?"  
Jack makes a mmmm noise to indicate he's listening.  
"It was at a gay nightclub, Jack. A man shot into the nightclub and he's injured like a HUNDRED people and the news is just going crazy as they update the... number of people that have died so far."

Jack feels pierced to the heart with an icicle. He stands and opens his laptop, starts bringing up the CBC news site.  
"Oh god, Bitty..."  
He pulls up the first article he finds.  
"Orlando shooting a 'domestic terror attack' targeting the LGBT community, Trudeau says"

The icicle in his heart expands to become a frozen space all the way down into his guts. 

Bitty continues sniffling and audibly scrubbing at his face. "I don't know WHAT I'm going to tell my parents at breakfast today... how do I explain? What can I even say?"

Jack takes deep slow breaths. If at all possible, now is not the time to have an anxiety attack. He has to stay here with his boyfriend. For his boyfriend.  
Flashing back on his early days in recovery, Jack murmurs, "Tell Susanne, that your Captain said to eat more protein."

It startles Bitty into a watery laugh. "Mister Zimmermann, I do declare, you're going to be the death of me."

"Also, _m'petit_ ," Jack says soberly, "it's a good start to the self care you're going to have to do today to get through this horrible news."  
Jack pulls on his pajama pants and takes the phone and laptop with him into the kitchen.  
He pulls out two of the frozen breakfast muffins Bitty made him that last time he visited Providence, pops them onto a plate and into the toaster oven to defrost and warm up to eating temperature. "I'm doing the same thing now, remember those breakfast muffins you made for me?" He starts the coffeemaker, that fortunately he'd remembered to set up last night.

"With the egg and cheese and bacon? Oh yeah. Good call, sweetheart. Gosh, I'm so sorry I had to wake you for such an awful reason!" Bitty sounds like he's about to cry again.  
"Hey, hey, hey now. You know we're both here in this. And we have friends in this. And family. We aren't alone. Yeah?"

Bitty's "yeah" is small and slow and sad.

"Yeah... and I *want* you to wake me, if you're hurting this bad, if you're ever in distress. I want to help in any way I can help. I don't want you to hurt at all, Eric, if I can help, I want to do that."  
Jack knows that Bitty knows, how serious he is about this. Jack only uses Bitty's given name when he needs to make it clear how serious he is about something important to both of them.

"We are in this together. We are ALL in this together, _mon coeur_. If you think Shitty and Lardo, Ransom and Holster, every last one of the Frogs and Tadpoles and the rest of the team don't have your back in this, sweetheart, you'd be wrong."

Jack earns another small "yeah" with this, but Bitty's sniffles are slowing and his breathing is becoming more calm.

The toaster oven pings, and the coffeepot is almost full. "Bits? Sweetheart?"  
"Yes, Jack. Thank you, darling."

"Go in to the bathroom and get yourself washed up. Drink a glass of water. Then get dressed, go down, get coffee or orange juice, and breakfast. Drink lots of water today."  
Jack thinks for a moment. "You should absolutely tell your mama that a horrible tragedy has occurred in Florida. Be honest with her about why you're upset, even if... " 

Jack looks down at his feet. Staying in the closet feels like the worst decision he's ever made, considering the horrible events of last night. He abruptly changes what he was going to say.

"Bitty? If you need to, and it feels safe, you can tell Susanne about us."

Bitty gasps a little. 

"No, no, if your mother reacts like we'd both expect her to, with compassion and kindness and horror at what's happened, she'll be able to hear you explain the last part of the reason why you're crying," and Jack's eyes well up himself, the knowledge of what's happened down south is finally sinking in... "And why it's important for her to help take care of you today and for the next several days, since I can't be there in person to do it myself."

Jack's grip on the sides of his phone is almost too hard, he can feel the phone casing biting into his palm and his fingers.

"I'm calling my therapist today to get an emergency session scheduled. I'll make sure I have people I trust around me today, and I'll do the same thing I'm telling you to do: I'll confide in someone, take care of my physical needs like food, water, breathing deeply and doing what I can to feel calm."

"Who do you trust enough to talk to, Jack? Are you gonna call Shitty?"

"Yeah, I'll call Shitty." He thinks, it's an awful, horrific reason to have to tell someone this news: this news that Bitty is the best thing that's happened to him in a long time, that he and Eric are together. To tell someone how well they work together, how happy he is, how happy he wants to make Eric, but with this tragedy now ripping a bloody hole in the quiet comfort and contentment they've been building together. 

"I'll call my parents first, I think, since they know about you already. They'll be able to help me think of the best course of action here. Maybe the Falcs will want to do something to help, I'll definitely want to talk to Georgia..."

"Jack, you don't have to do that...? I mean, honey, won't that make people suspect?" Bitty's voice is trembling.

Jack shifts the phone to his other hand, shakes out his hand bones, creaky from clutching it, and his shoulder, tight from stress. He pauses a moment to take a deep breath and sigh it out again slowly.  
"Bits, I have this feeling in my gut that this kind of thing has the potential to change ... change almost everything. This might be one of those tipping points of history, after which things aren't the same again, and all our previous plans go to shit."

He pours himself some coffee, wrapping his sore hand around the thick stoneware mug. Drinks some coffee while thinking what else to say, since Bitty is uncharacteristically quiet, probably waiting for another shoe to drop.

"We might want to come out sooner than we originally planned. I don't want to be out here processing that... that people I love now, or... have loved in the past, are grieving and furious and feeling threatened and fearful... I don't want to be processing that all alone. And I don't want you to have to cope all alone either."  
Jack's exhale is forceful.

"And I don't want you spending all your time today on the internet reading up on this either. You go workout, go bake, talk on the team chat. Don't you dwell in the news cycle, it does you no good. I won't either, to be honest."

"Okay, Jack, I won't." Bitty's voice sounds firmer than it has yet this morning, though still thick from crying. "I'll go clean up, get dressed, go down and try to eat something. And... I'll see about talking to my mama."

When Jack says, "Bittle, I've got your back. WE've got your back," he can hear the smile in Bitty's voice: "oh my GOD I love you, you ridiculous boy..."  
This makes Jack's heart warm up the leftover stress-icicle and melt it the rest of the way, and suddenly he realizes he can think clearly and function. He knows he needs to put his framework in place so that both of them will have what they need to get through this stress filled day.

When Jack says "I love you too, _mon coeur_ ," his thumb might just caress the side of his phone, wishing it was Bitty's face, or hand, that touching each other in real time could be part of the comfort routine for today. He clears his throat and continues, "Stay safe, love. Cry if you need to, and drink lots of water. I'll have a few of the guys check on you later today, and we can talk again tonight."

Bitty takes a nice deep clear breath of his own, significantly calmer, "All right. Bye for now then, honey, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for ... listening, and for being here with me, Jack."

The call disconnects. 

Jack eats half of his first muffin as he opens the chat window for the Samwell Men's Hockey team and types,  
_hey guys, just talked with Bittle. He's really feeling things strongly with this LGBT nightclub shooting in Florida. Can everyone who wants to, //gently// check in with him at some point today? It's brutal and horrible and I need us all to have each other's backs, like we always do. thanks_

Then Jack pulls up a new window, typing "Shits? I really need to talk to you soon, maybe in about an hour. Gotta call my parents first."

Finally, he takes his last bites of the lovingly made breakfast muffin, slumps sideways at his kitchen table, and props his forehead in his hand as he hits speed-dial for his mother. "Maman? There's been some horrible news down in the States. Bitty's really upset, and I'm having a rough time with it, myself." Alicia makes the conversation easier, soothing her son's distress as best as she can from so many miles away. "Yes, I need to talk with you and Papa ... about what might be next."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd. This also needed to come out of me today. Right now there's someone on my facebook who's arguing that "it's not guns that kill people, it's people killing people, someone with an ax or a knife could have done this..." and the blatant, sheer, willful IGNORANCE of him is making my head explode. 
> 
> I simply CAN'T with him, so here is some Functional!Jack who remembers his lessons in stress management and coping with a world that's being horrible to you in the moment.


	3. Rise in Power, Mighty Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art is intended to MOVE people, to make them FEEL.   
> This happens for both the artist making the art, and for the viewer experiencing the art.  
> Passion in the maker is the best source for passion in the viewer.

A week after the Orlando nightclub shooting, Lardo woke at some ungodly hour of the morning with an image in her head she couldn’t shake. It was compelling, it hurt to think of, and it wouldn’t leave her till she sketched it out. She spent a couple of hours noting some of the details from memory and letting her eyes fill up with tears occasionally, distractedly wiping whenever her eyes got full enough to blur her vision.

She pulled her laptop over and started drafting an email to her senior project advisor. Doctor Hardison was a favorite teacher of hers whose classes during Lardo’s sophomore year had fueled the fire of Lardo’s passion for sculpture. In those classes, new possibilities had awoken in her heart and mind, and Lardo started to dream BIG for the first time.

Doc Hard would understand that Lardo’s project had to change. They’d only begun on the early stages of design for the first idea Lardo had initially wanted to work with… but this, this instead, had the potential to be more than just a senior art project. Something bigger. Something more important. Something truly passionate. Maybe this could even be something that helped, just a little, with everyone’s pain, confusion, and frustrated helpless anger after the Pulse nightclub shooting. Maybe it would be something that would help people to actually do the things that would start making the world BETTER than this.

Thinking and feeling her way through the idea in equal measure, Lardo started roughing out the plan in more detail. She quickly decides that her first plan of a 7x 7 grid is both too geometric and far too regular for this kind of memorial artwork. Even set on an angle or as a diamond… 

The truth is that these human stories that have been brutally interrupted … don’t fit neatly in a pattern. The grief is unique for each life that was taken. The story for each is unique.

That’s the key, she realized. Something about each individual stroke of the project had to make that point. She thinks back on all the shootings she can remember just from her own lifetime: She can just barely remember Columbine, it’s more from the Michael Moore movie that it even seems real. But she knows that her life was shaped by it. Schools didn’t use to have metal detectors and giant heavy iron fences around them, security guards, pat downs and bag searches. 

Columbine to Sandy Hook to Pulse.

So many people, senselessly murdered. Each one beloved by someone, or by many someones…

Lardo starts pulling up news stories about individual victims, reading and crying silently. 

Numbers can be intellectualized. Individual stories cannot. ART cannot, if you do it right. Art should hit you right in the gut: should bypass intellect and force you to FEEL, help you to understand.

There'd be time to hit the art supply store later, pick up supplies for the model. Maybe Shitty will be willing to drive up from Boston if she asks. Of course he would, she thinks, with a wry smile that sends an errant teardrop back into her ear. Of course he would.

She goes out to the Haus kitchen and starts a pot of coffee and watches the sun rise while she drinks her first cup of the day, already making supplies lists and sketching furiously.

Fury and frustration as FUEL is nothing new for Larissa Duan, but this, THIS? This could change lives if she does it right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more to Lardo's design that I'm having trouble representing non-graphically. And my drafting skills are for shit. So I can see it in my head but am working on how to describe it with words, and it's a bit of a struggle, but it is THERE. I'll get it soon.


	4. Punching shit won't help and it won't make you feel better. Make a plan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone surprised that Shitty got fucked up with this news? no?

Shitty feels like punching someone. The frustration is huge and he's got no idea how to let it out. It's not like there's a tradition of dropping the gloves and starting a fight with asshole dudebros at Year One Harvard Law...

When he hears the news about the mass shooting on Orlando, he's uncharacteristically silent for several minutes. The rest of the coffee shop continues to swirl and chatter around him. As though they didn't hear the CNN announcement, as though they're unaffected.

He wants to bellow, cuss, break shit, punch assholes in the face. He wants to rail at the heavens for the injustice, the unfairness.  
His moment of stunned silence opens up into a cold fury at his own impotence, and he spends several minutes setting up Google Alerts on his phone and swiftly making lists of possible people to contact. He knows he knows people he can wheedle and twist the arms of to meaningfully help. Between his family and the people his family knows, they ought to be able to Do Something.

He knows from his own past history that this moment of clear thinking won't last long, it's the eye in the storm of his emotions. He'll be useless for academics or anything other than ranting, so he'd better ditch his classes today. Fortunately he's met some classmates who aren't actual douchebags, and he texts a few people asking if they'll share notes with him. He tells them it's a family emergency.

Because it is. Because he knows his boys, his hockey family, and he knows this is gonna hit them all hard. And he's gonna do something to help fix this for them, to help the survivors and the families, if it's the last fucking thing he ever does.

First on his list: text Bitty, text Jack, text Lardo.  
Then he'll hit the gym and hit it hard - he's going to have to sweat and work today, and cussing at the gym weights is at least more socially acceptable than yelling curses at the sky and the unfeeling gods who blindly oversee man's inhumanity to other men.

Shitty can feel the words starting to well up in him, along with the anger, fury, frustration with this fucked up world and the fucked up motherfuckers who go out KILLING perfectly regular people who were just out for a drink, a dance, and a good time.

Why the fuck did it matter SO MUCH to the shitstain with a gun, what those folks did, or who they loved?

Shitty pushes back suddenly from the cafe table, his chair screeching on the tile. He can't bear being inside anymore, with all these "normal folks" who weren't reacting to just another American mass murder.  
He collects some disinterested gazes from nearby patrons as he angrily stuffs his papers and books for class haphazardly back into his messenger bag, swearing somewhat quietly under his breath.  
Swearing non-stop, foully, furiously, trying to keep it under his breath until he can at LEAST get out into the parking lot and let some of it out.

Pushing through the glass double doors, he lets out a heartfelt stream of angry profanity, storming down the mostly empty sidewalk towards his car. His car, when he gets there, is far enough away from any groups of people that he feels safe enough to scream "FUCK!!" repeatedly, throw his bag to the ground, kick his own car's tires, pull on his hair, punch the air restlessly while yelling.

When he can feel the edge of the wave of uncontrolled feeling passing over him finally, he takes several deep breaths. He's not entirely surprised to realize that he was also crying while he was yelling and furious. His face is wet and his throat is still tight. Shitty takes a moment and runs his hand over the top of his car, pats the roof. It's an apology and thanks for bearing the worst of his initial helpless fury.

He pulls out his phone and sees he's missed a text from Jack. Jack wants to talk.  
Shitty nods grimly.

"Let's do something about this together, Jacky-boy," he says quietly to the silent phone. "Let's make the world suck a little bit less after this horrible mess. Let's make parachutes and nets, let's make chain mail and armor, let's figure out how to fix the fucked up ones and protect the ones who have done nothing wrong but love somebody. I'll wait for you to call me, but BY GOD we're gonna change the world."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm the one who can't stop crying.  
> so I had to write. Originally posted to Tumblr.
> 
> Do Something. Do anything to make this world kinder, better, safer. Please.  
> \------------  
> Comments are love. <3  
> thank you Ngozi for creating this comic!
> 
> and you're welcome to come find me on tumblr and nerd out about these adorable kids. =)  
> come find my main blog at labelleizzy on tumblr and Dreamwidth, or my omgcp sideblog at makeshittyknightproud: I reblog fanart, fanfic, and meta.
> 
> Further Headcanons: Jack gets with his parents and makes large charitable donations to the Florida organizations who are doing the trauma recovery for the victims and victims' families, to the Orlando LGBTQ/MOGAI centers, to the GSA and other organizations at Samwell and in Providence, and spearheads a *very well* attended by local, national, and international press, blood drive for the Falconers, several of whom make statements to the effect that they fully support and affirm all sexual and gender identities. Some Falconers promise they will be doing more charitable work towards social justice in their own hometowns, and welcome contact from reputable charitable organizations.
> 
> Shitty has never been so glad he is a member of the Knight clan and that he knows where all the bodies are buried. His family got so used to his brash and bluster and forgot how effective Shitty is at what is functionally, familial blackmail. The Boston Brahmin circles his family is known in all suddenly step up their financial support for shelters and education for LGBTQ teens and young people, in the wake of the tragedy.
> 
> Lardo's Senior Art Project takes a radically different tack and she has to get special permission from her department head to include the new components she's inspired to use, but she's so passionate about this new message and new technique that they're inevitably swayed to give her permission and then active support. After she graduates, her project goes on to become a permanent installation and memorial at the Samwell Student Union.
> 
> Ransom and Holster, Dex and Nursey, all sign up to be spokespeople for the You Can Play Foundation. That's how each of them (and their Hausmates and teammates) learn about each of the boys' SECOND favorite sport. (Ransom canonically plays golf. Open to suggestions for what the other three love to play when they're not on the rink.)
> 
> Chowder starts volunteering with his local tiny tots hockey league when he's home from college, and guest stars sometimes in the other guys' You Can Play videos. His combination fierce goalie work and adorable interpersonal nature makes him a fan favorite. 
> 
> #moreideasasIthinkofthem


End file.
